1930 Ford Model A Coupe - Time Traveler

Though Street Rodder often hears from hot rodders who were influenced in their youth by something they heard or saw in a magazine or at a show, it’s very rare that the magazine runs across someone who has bothered to not only track down the person responsible for their obsession, but to also find that the influential rodder still owns the very same vehicle from 40 years past!

2/8The car that started a lifelong admiration of hot rods for Larry Terpstra is this one, circa 1968. Ron Musch owned this ’31 Ford, and spent a fair amount of his youth racing it around on the back roads of Indiana.

Such is the case for Larry Terpstra, a Midwest farm kid who witnessed some pretty cool cars racing down the farm roads around his home in Indiana back in the ’60s and ’70s. Now all grown up at the ripe old age of 52, Larry went back to some of his earliest memories to find the spark to light his current hot rodding fixation, and he expressed it in a letter to Street Rodder this way:

“My interest in cars began at the age of 10. It was 1968 and my sister was a carhop at Meyers Drive-In in Northwest Indiana’s Community of DeMotte. It was when our family went to get custard that I noticed all of the hot rods. The fastest car in town belonged to Ronnie Musch. It was a chopped-and-channeled yellow coupe with a small-block Chevy 365hp motor. That car was the coolest thing I had ever seen or heard in my life. It was years ahead of John Milner’s iconic ride in American Graffiti, but it was just as influential to me. The road to the local quarter-mile ran right past my house and when you heard open headers you knew what was coming. As a farm kid this was fun at its best. A few times we even talked our dad into going out to watch the fun. Those memories have been etched in my brain forever.

3/8

“After raising our family, my wife, Donna, made the mistake of telling me I needed a hobby. Well that was all it took for the search to begin. Most cars we saw just did not fit the bill, that was until a friend at my daughter’s softball game told me of a 1930 Ford Model A coupe he had seen but didn’t want to buy. The next day I drove to see the car and gave a deposit to hold it until I could pick it up. As I was shaking hands to seal the deal, another gentleman pulled up with the full amount of money. Lucky for me the seller was a man of his word and the car was mine.”

4/8A ’53 Mercury motor was punched to 276 cubes by Everett Plata and fitted with an Isky Maxi cam before Offenhauser heads and intake (topped with two chrome Strombergs) were added. The Beehive oil filter is a nice touch and the car carries a great exhaust note due to the fact Terpstra doesn’t like to run baffles in those chromed Limefire headers from Sanderson. The motor is backed to a Ford AOD trans.

Larry drove the stock Model A the next summer, but the car wouldn’t last long in that condition. Recommended by the father of a fellow worker, Larry soon found Tim O’Connell of O’Connell Specialties. Based in Plainfield, Illinois, O’Connell burst on the scene in 2004 when his shop built the Detroit Autorama’s Don Ridler Memorial Award winner for Al Brockly (a bright red ’37 Willys coupe with a ’41 nose). Local folk had known about O’Connell’s talents before the rest of the country, and Larry waited for a slot in O’Connell’s shop to open up so work could begin.

Larry says he had the exact car in mind when he and Tim started on the project, and he credits Tim with keeping him focused on building a traditional-style hot rod that was both safe and a blast to drive. O’Connell, who opened his shop in 1999, has used Total Cost Involved chassis many times on other cars, and went with their Model A Stage III that included a stainless steel four-bar setup with coilovers on either end of a Ford 9-inch (3.70:1) while a Super Bell 5-inch dropped axle and hairpins went in up front. Steel 15-inch wheels (4.5 and 7 inch) are wrapped in wide white Firestone rubber (5.60 and 8.20) and topped with Spyder caps and trim rings (the rings are found on both the inside and outside of the rims). Brakes are drum in the rear and Wilwood disc up front, and stainless steel brake lines were used throughout.

5/8

It’s all about looks and performance with a traditional car and, in this car, power comes from a 1953 Mercury Flathead bored to 276 cubes and set up with a 9:1 compression. Everett Plata in Lockport, Illinois, did the required machining and assembled the Flattie with an Isky Maxi cam, Egge three-ring pistons, and a reground 4-inch crank. The block was equipped with stainless steel valves before the polished Offenhauser heads were bolted on and the Offy manifold was topped with a pair of chrome Stromberg carbs.

6/8Schober’s Trim and Upholstery created a special bench seat for the 6-foot-4 Larry, then covered everything with pleated red and black Naugahyde. A steering wheel from Juliano’s and a roadster column from Flaming River help point the rod down the road, and a Lokar Nostalgia shifter with a SO-CAL spike shifter knob draws some attention. Besides a small column-mounted tachometer, the rest of the car’s vitals are located in a custom twin gauge fabbed by O’Connell Specialties, made to replicate one from a ’34 Plymouth.

A Mallory dual-point ignition was also installed along with a set of Raja wires, and a 100-amp alternator from Powermaster sits up top. Exhaust exits through chromed Sanderson Limefire headers with no baffles (though Car Chemistry muffler inserts were made for the car, Larry likes the engine’s exhaust note without them). Competition Transmission in Lynwood, Illinois, supplied the Ford AOD trans, and the gears are selected via a Lokar Nostalgia shifter fitted with a SO-CAL spiked ball knob.

To get the look Larry wanted for his car, O’Connell was going to have to do some major fabrication to the body. Besides recessing the firewall 3 inches, the top was chopped and the body channeled 3 inches, and new floor sections were made. A unique addition was the operation of the windshield, which now swings open from the bottom. O’Connell also made a one-piece hood for the car, but why would you ever want to cover up that motor?

Ron Kral, who runs Top Gun Red in Rockdale, Illinois, has painted many cars that have appeared in magazines, and also did the paintwork on the aforementioned Ridler winner built by O’Connell. Kral covered Larry’s ride with an RM Diamont Black, and Tom Kelly followed with some great red and white pinstriping accents around the old cowl gas cap, decklid, and dash.

Since Larry is 6-foot-4, special consideration was needed when designing the interior of the chopped coupe. Dave Schober of Schober’s Trim and Upholstery came to the rescue by fitting Larry to a custom bench seat before covering the inside of the coupe with pleated red and black Naugahyde. Charcoal-colored square-weave carpet was also used, and Juliano’s seatbelts keep passenger and driver safe. Set into the Model A dash is a panel with custom twin gauges created by O’Connell to replicate the look of a ’34 Plymouth gauge. O’Connell also utilized a Painless Wiring 12-circuit wiring kit when wiring the car, incorporating a heat-only system from Vintage Air in the process. The interior is finished off with a Juliano’s steering wheel bolted to a Flaming River roadster column.

7/8

Pretty cool hearing how you and your dad would jump into the truck to watch. If I inspired you to build your coupe, I must have done a good job judging from the pictures of it; we thought we were bad influences!
I’m sure you are inspiring other kids right now with your coupe. I guess that’s how street rodding keeps rolling on.
Happy roddin’,
Ron

One of the great things to come from working on this car was Larry was able to trace down what Ron Musch, the owner of that coupe from decades ago, was doing nowadays. Larry was hoping Musch had some pictures of his old car to study and he did, sending them along with the following letter. To anyone who reads it, we feel it couldn’t express any better what building and driving a hot rod is all about:

8/8After O’Connell chopped and channeled the car 3 inches and recessed the firewall the same amount, Ron Kral covered the Model A with RM Diamont Black paint. The 15-inch steelies, wrapped in Firestone wide whites, use trim rings on both sides of the wheel for a custom touch.

Larry,

Pretty cool hearing how you and your dad would jump into the truck to watch. If I inspired you to build your coupe, I must have done a good job judging from the pictures of it; we thought we were bad influences!

I'm sure you are inspiring other kids right now with your coupe. I guess that's how street rodding keeps rolling on.
Happy roddin',
Ron

Here are the best pics I could find of the coupe. It was a ’31 Model A with a 327—365hp Vette engine backed by a three-speed truck trans. Not the best shifting trans but it held up.

The frame was stepped in the front and rear. It’s still behind the shop in the weeds. Not the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen but it went straight down the road. I think the late ’60s and early ’70s had to be some of the best street racing there was.

There was so much horsepower out there and not a lot of late-night traffic. The coupe was kind of a dinosaur compared to the GMs and Mopars that were running around. It wasn’t hard to find races and, after a while, they would find you.

I still remember a 440 RT coming to town. We went by your house at 110 with the headers open. I gave him a three-car start and beat him by ten. He didn’t even come back into town to say goodbye.